There is a lot of controversy about how to visualize the scenes you paint. Some folks paint from photos, some argue you should paint from life, and others swear you should just paint from your imagination. The photo-haters point out that most of us are not professional photographers, so our photos are full of distortion and lousy composition. It is true that the snaps you get with your phone camera are often flattened and the color is way off. The perspective is wonky and when you try to zoom in get more detail, the picture is fuzzy. Several of my instructors have sternly cautioned to never use stock photos by professional photographers from websites like Pexels because your painting will never have the life and vibrancy of your own photos. While painting plein air can produce amazing slices of life, not everybody has easy access to evocative scenery that inspires them. Painting from your imagination is fine most of the time but if your aren’t really practiced at sketching and seeing, you’ll find the visual information files in your brain can really hold you back in terms of creating scenes that make sense to the viewer’s eye. Even the most gestural paintings have underpinnings of light and compositional balance. I don’t have an answer to what the best approach should be. I tend to either paint from life or from memory. I don’t use photographs because they often lose so much of the experience or emotions I felt when viewing the scene. As usual, my advice is trying all three and see what combination works for you. There is no “correct” way, and the most important thing is that the painting you create communicates whatever your goal was in the first place.